Taylor Swift fans file lawsuit against Ticketmaster after Eras Tour ticket sales - here’s why

Beth Franklin
By Beth Franklin
Published 8th Dec 2022, 11:56 BST
NSAI Songwriter-Artist of the Decade honoree, Taylor Swift performs onstage during NSAI 2022 Nashville Songwriter Awards at Ryman Auditorium on September 20, 2022 in Nashville, Tennessee. (Photo by Terry Wyatt/Getty Images)NSAI Songwriter-Artist of the Decade honoree, Taylor Swift performs onstage during NSAI 2022 Nashville Songwriter Awards at Ryman Auditorium on September 20, 2022 in Nashville, Tennessee. (Photo by Terry Wyatt/Getty Images)
NSAI Songwriter-Artist of the Decade honoree, Taylor Swift performs onstage during NSAI 2022 Nashville Songwriter Awards at Ryman Auditorium on September 20, 2022 in Nashville, Tennessee. (Photo by Terry Wyatt/Getty Images)
It’s been reported more than two dozen Taylor Swift fanshave filed a lawsuit against Ticketmaster following drama over Eras Tour tickets

A group of 26 Taylor Swift fans filed a lawsuit in California on Friday (December 2), against Ticketmaster’s parent company. The suit states the company had engaged in anticompetitive conduct and fraud after their disastrous roll out of tickets to Swift’s upcoming Era’s tour.

The glitch-filled sale of tickets left thousands of eager fans empty handed and unhappy. Due to the high demand of presale tickets to Ms Swift’s 52 show tour, set to begin in March 2023, the company cancelled the general sale of tickets saying: “Due to extraordinarily high demands on ticketing systems and insufficient remaining ticket inventory to meet that demand, tomorrow’s public on-sale for Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour has been cancelled.”

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

They also said the site had faced a “staggering number of bot attacks as well as fans who didn’t have codes” which resulted in 3.5 billion system requests, four times its previous peak. It said that more than two million tickets for the tour were sold on November 15, which is the most for an artist in a single day.

The tour has been under development for a number of months with the Financial Times reporting Swift had previously been in negotiations with Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto group FTX for a sponsorship deal on the tour. It’s since been confirmed that FTX had been willing to pay £100 million for the deal that collapsed in November.

The discussions included a ticketing arrangement with digital certificates known as non-fungible tokens from the record-breaking “Anti Hero” singer-songwriter, according to people familiar with the matter.

So, what are the grounds in which Swifties are suing Ticketmaster? Here’s what we know so far.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Why are Taylor Swift fans suing Ticketmaster?

This withdrawal of the public sale resulted in outcry from fans and prompted calls from lawmakers to break up the 2010 merger of Ticketmaster and Live Nation. Now fans have filed the 33 page complaint in the Superior Court of California in Los Angeles County.

A lawyer representing the fans, Jennifer Kinder, spoke on the suit saying: “Hundreds of thousands of people waited from four to eight hours and never got an opportunity to buy tickets, so they just want the system to change,”

Kinder, who said she and her 11-year-old daughter were Swift fans, added: “It has to be made fair. This is not a fair market. This is not supply and demand. This is a manipulated market that benefits Ticketmaster.”